Epstein, Terrie (2009). Interpreting National History: Race, Identity, and Pedagogy in Classrooms and Communities. Reviewed by Alexander Cuenca, University of Georgia

Epstein, Terrie (2009). Interpreting National History: Race, Identity, and Pedagogy in Classrooms and Communities. NY: Routledge Pp. 192         ISBN 978-0-415-96084-7 Reviewed by Alexander Cuenca University of Georgia April 23, 2009 Troubled by the inaudible account of racism in the telling of national history in schools, Terrie Epstein in her book Interpreting National History: Race, Identity, and Pedagogy in Classrooms and Communities (2009) presents the findings of a five-year ethnographic study examining how classroom pedagogies and racial identities shape students’ interpretations of U.S. history. Drawing on observations of fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade classrooms, and in-depth interviews with students, teachers, and parents, Epstein argues that racial identity plays a significant role in the ways which students perceive the telling of national history. Grounded in a socio-cultural understanding of the learning of national history, Epstein’s work is a significant contribution to studies that have examined students’ historical thinking (Seixas, 1993; Wineburg, 2000) by providing a cultural dimension to the understanding of students’ historical reasoning. However, beyond her empirical contributions, Epstein’s work is significant due to its clear call for teaching U.S. history for social justice. As Epstein suggests, mute in the narrative presented in today’s U.S. history classroom is the significant role of racism and injustice in the development of the nation. While the whisper of racism found in the telling of U.S. history is barely registered by the statistical majority, those in the minority who bear the brunt of racism in past and present forms find the subtlety of racial injustice in the telling of American history intolerable. For Epstein, the absence of racism and injustice in today’s U.S. history classrooms provides “an inaccurate and dishonest presentation of the nation’s development” and robs “young people of the knowledge and abilities to learn from past injustice, connect past to ongoing systems of oppression and employ individual and collective strategies to resist and challenge inequality” (p. xiv). In order to reconcile this dissonance and its effect on interpretation of U.S. history, Epstein argues for a curriculum that acknowledges “the significant and enduring role that racism and other forms of inequality have played—and continue to play—in our national history and contemporary society” and teaches “the multiple ways that individuals and groups within and across racial lines have struggled to extend freedom and equality” (p. 4). Interpreting National History is organized into five succinct chapters; beginning with an exploration of the larger political and cultural contexts that shape the teaching and learning of national history. In this first chapter Epstein introduces the reader to her participants: the teachers, students, and parents of the community of Oakdale. While many studies in the teaching and learning of U.S. history limit their focus to interactions found within the classroom (Dimitriadis, 2000; Schweber, 2004) or assess the impact of family stories on the historical consciousness of students (Wineburg, Mossbord, Porat, & Dunacan, 2007), Epstein bridges these two research designs and considers how family/community discourse outside the classroom affects how pedagogy is interpreted inside the classroom. The inclusion of the family/community dimension as an influential factor in a student’s learning of U.S. history is a distinguishing feature of Epstein’s research and a welcomed and needed perspective for those who aim to be culturally relevant educators (Ladson-Billings, 1995). In chapter two, Epstein turns to a description of how six Oakdale teachers (two teachers in fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade respectively) thought and taught about racial groups, individual rights, and race relations in their U.S. history classroom. Compiling observational and interview data, Epstein describes the teaching of U.S. history in Oakdale. The perspectives and pedagogies of the Oakdale teachers are then critiqued for missed opportunities to promote social justice and mixed messages sent to students about the pervasiveness of racism in U.S. history. For example, in interviews many of the Oakdale teachers emphasized the significant contributions of racial and ethnic groups in national history. However, in practice, Epstein notes, “the teachers rarely included lessons on people other than blacks and Native Americans and they most often presented them as victims rather than nation builders” (p. 32). In her critique of the Oakdale teachers Epstein advances the possibilities of a social justice oriented classroom and provides current and prospective teachers with clear alternatives to the commonsense approaches to teaching U.S. history (Apple, 2004). The following chapter analyzes how each teacher's pedagogies influenced students’ historical explanations and interpretations about race and rights. Following students in each of the six history classrooms discussed in the previous chapter, Epstein chronicles white and black students’ pre and post instruction explanations and interpretations of racial groups, race relations, and national development and identity. Combining student interviews, a questionnaire that asked students to identify and explain important actors and events in U.S. history, and a “nation narration task” that asked students to select the most important historical actors and events from an assortment of picture cards focused on traditional nation building narratives and African American experiences, Epstein was able to investigate how students constructed national history before and after instruction. Her analysis in this chapter is informative and reveals the racial divide between white and black students’ interpretations of U.S. history. She discovers that while white students held unwavering beliefs about the linear progress of individual rights through time, black students thought of white Americans in history as oppressors of blacks and saw racism as an ongoing aspect of national history. Also, Epstein’s analysis reveals that the pedagogy of the six Oakdale teachers had very little effect on students’ overall interpretative framework. The pedagogy in the Oakdale classrooms served to amplify pre-existing explanations and interpretations of national history “even in classrooms where teachers’ interpretations conflicted with or contradicted those of their students, students generally continued to interpret race and rights in May as they had in September” (p. 87). The differences in black and white students’ interpretive frameworks led Epstein to examine family/community discourses in the fourth chapter. Through interviews with the parents of Oakdale’s students, Epstein elicits their interpretations of national history, school history, and history at home. She found white parents’ interpretations of race and rights in national history to be consistent with those of their children and paralleled the framework of national history taught in schools. Conversely, black parents constructed a much more critical interpretation of race, conceiving individual rights as exclusive rather than progressively expanding and highlighting black agency and pride in their homes. As Epstein suggests, “history in black homes was more than a mechanism of situating black children within the course of black experiences; it was a mean to prepare them for the harshness of racism and violence in contemporary society” (p. 103). In trying to gain a multidimensional perspective of the construction of national history, Epstein also examines in this chapter adolescents’ interpretations of history and society in school-wide settings, mixed race settings, and black settings. Immersing herself in community adolescent experiences, Epstein concludes, “black adolescents turned to alternative educational texts and venues to learn about and present the range of responses to racism that blacks had developed over time, including the need for black self-defense, self-determination and other forms of black nationalism” (p. 113). Going beyond the classroom door to examine the ways in which family and community discourse shaped the way students interpret classroom pedagogy is perhaps the most significant contribution of this text. Peering into the lives of students outside the classroom, Epstein is able to make clear parallels between cultural diversity based in family and community discourse and the understanding of U.S. history. By directly bridging cultural characteristics based outside of the classroom with interpretations of national history inside the classroom Epstein provides current and prospective teachers with clear evidence of the necessity of culturally responsive teaching (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). In the final chapter, possible pedagogical solutions are given in order to bridge racial differences in the history classroom. While acknowledging the current constraints of standards and testing which reinforce dominant views of national development and silence racism and white teachers’ tendencies to avoid race talk, Epstein suggests teachers become aware of how their racial identities have shaped their own interpretations of national history, become more aware of their students’ interpretive frameworks, and create pedagogy and develop curricular approaches that are responsive to the knowledge of students’ interpretive frames. Finally, examples are given of the ways in which two culturally responsive teachers teach history for social justice, weaving together the theory presented with concrete practice. Overall, this text serves as a great tool for those who wish to see the interplay between culturally responsive, culturally relevant, and social justice education. Epstein masterfully makes a case for the presence of these elements in the teaching of national history in order to enact altering learning experiences for all students, regardless of race. Perhaps my only trouble with the text is the absence of other non-white voices. While Epstein mentions Latino and Asian American students in the Oakdale classrooms, their perspectives are missing from her findings and from the research design (i.e., there are no contributions in the nation narration task from the Latino or Asian American communities). Nevertheless, as a whole, this text serves as powerful evidence that students of different races enter their history classrooms with pre-established interpretative frameworks and calls on history teachers to do more than merely genuflect to this diversity and work in ways that provide learning experiences that alter these frameworks in significant ways. References Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and Curriculum (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge. Dimitriadis, G. (2000). “Making history go” at a local community center: Popular media and the construction of historical knowledge among African-American youth. Theory and Research in Social Education, 28, 40-64. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). The Dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Schweber, S. A. (2004). Making sense of the Holocaust: Lessons from classroom practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Villegas, A. M., & Lucas, T. (2002). Preparing culturally responsive teachers: Rethinking the curriculum. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(1), 20–32. Wineburg, S., Mossborg, S., Porat, D., & Duncan, A. (2007). Common belief and the cultural curriculum: An intergenerational study of historical consciousness. American Educational Research Journal, 44, 40-76. About the Reviewer Alexander Cuenca is a doctoral student in the Department of Elementary and Social Science Education at the University of Georgia and a former middle school U.S. history teacher in Hialeah Gardens, Florida. His research interests are socio-cultural learning perspectives, social studies teacher education, and the self-study of teacher education practices.